Emptiness and Solidity: New Sources of Contemporary Chinese Military Perspectives on the Sunzi

• In Event: Aspects of US and Chinese Security and Economic Strategy

Abstract

Since the publication of Griffith’s landmark English language translation of Sun Wu’s Art of War (the Sunzi) over five decades ago, a host of Western scholars have produced translations and analyses of the text. Translations have relied on nearly two millennia of commentaries, providing useful insights into traditional Chinese interpretations of the Sunzi. In contrast, most analyses of the text have been done from a contemporary Western perspective, using the writings of renowned European strategists (e.g. Clausewitz) as the reference and characterizing their observations about the Sunzi in terms of differences from that norm. Such examinations, frequently written to address present-day military or political implications of the text, rarely consider contemporary Chinese perspectives on the Sunzi.
Modern Chinese readers confront many of the challenges faced by non-Chinese readers when attempting to comprehend the Sunzi. To fully engage the text they must wrestle with the ambiguities of classical Chinese, become familiar with early Chinese philosophical concepts, and understand the details of early Chinese warfare. Fortunately, there is an abundance of publicly-available books which have been published by military publishing houses or written by authors who are affiliated with Chinese military universities that thoroughly deal with the linguistic, philosophical, and historical issues. Such books also present contemporary military and political applications of principles discussed in the Sunzi.
This paper presents an overview of these materials and provides examples of how they can be used to improve our understanding of both the Sunzi and contemporary Chinese military and political perspectives on the text.

Author

• Mark Metcalf, University of Virginia